[CamelCaseName]

In Google's defense:

1. This was announced over 3 years ago [0]

2. Photos/Videos uploaded to Picasa were transferred to Google Photos automatically (comments/tags/captions will be lost though) [1]

3. Picasa was originally built in 2002! (bought by Google in 2004) -- Perhaps Picasa had a time and place?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa#Discontinuation

[1] https://picasa.google.com/

[untog]

Yeah, I'm often one to criticise Google, but an entirely free cloud-based photo album was never going to be around forever. If you are very concerned with keeping an online record for all time you really shouldn't be depending on free stuff like Picasa.

[Eric_WVGG]

Maybe, but it would also cost Google almost nothing to set up a 301 redirect from Picasa URLs to Google Photos. I wouldn't expect someone like Yahoo or Microsoft to bother, but being a “good web citizen” seems intrinsic to the Google corporate identity, after all.

[nikanj]

The harder it is to find things via following links, the more you’ll resort to search. Google has a perverse incentive to break the links.

[ucaetano]

But that doesn't solve the issue that the photos on Google Photos are private by default, so Google would need to change the sharing to public on all photos that have external links, which would be a terrible privacy measure.

[mhdhn]

Hello Gmail users! :)

[ucaetano]

You really shouldn't count on having Gmail available forever!

Or even for a few years.

[Rebelgecko]

If you use Inbox, you can't count on it being available for more than few weeks :(

[ArrayList]

> an entirely free cloud-based photo album

Uhh.. isn't that exactly what Google Photos is?